Handbook of Nutritional Supplements

Volume II, Agricultural Use

Miloslav Rechcigl

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351089876
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nutrition, Dietics & Bariatrics

The Handbook is composed of two parts, the first volume covering supplements for human usewhile the second volume is devoted to agriculture supplements. This volume, relating to agriculture supplements, covers various food byproducts and nutritional and other food supplements used in animal feeding. In addition, it also includes information on nutrition supplements for plants.

Nutrient Sources and Feed Additives

Nutritional Supplements for Animals: Vitamins

Jacob C. Bauernfeind and Elmer De Ritter

Introduction

Livestock production is a part of agriculture throughout the world, in regions ranging from the most intensive type of scientific development to the crudest form of scavenging. Livestock production is the largest where per capita supply of developed agricultural and industrial resources also is the largest. Greater and/or more efficient productivity from farm animals is partly related to the genetic potential and the husbandry system under which they are raised. The animal that is free to roam expends a portion of its food energy in locomotion. It does, however, have access to soil, sunlight, varied plant life, etc. and thus augments and varies his feed intake to suit his nutrient needs and desires. On the other hand, animals confined to limited quarters, usually indoors, convert feed energy to animal weight gains more efficiently, but this husbandry practice places a greater burden on the feeder since all nutrients must be supplied in the ration or feed in adequate amounts for the optimum physiological animal response and in a palatable and physically acceptable form. Furthermore, under the latter system, the animal is physiologically challenged, stressed by population pressures, more subject to disease exposure, and must be under close scrutiny for problem prevention. While the higher levels of production of animals of better quality have been influenced by improved breeds and strains through genetic selection, by a more intensive system of husbandry, and by greater protection, prophylactically as well as therapeutically, against disease, the recognition of farm animal’s practical needs for nutrients and the formulation of rations containing these nutrients to achieve production goals has been a major factor in the year-round economy and efficiency of livestock production.

In the past 4 decades livestock production has undergone major changes in methods and sizes of operation. Over this time interval there has been a strong trend toward consolidation or integration of smaller businesses into fewer but larger businesses, which has provided the financial strength to enter large volume and low cost operations to yield economically priced animal products. These trends occurred first in broiler, egg, and turkey production. For example, in the 1930s turkey flock sizes averaged about 2000 to 4000, whereas today one integrated independent operation raises as many as 2.5 million turkeys per year and may start 20,000 to 40,000 poults at one time in one large brooder house. The broiler industry similarly has become highly integrated with about 50 companies being now responsible for about 90% of the broilers processed under U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection. The same pattern of integration is discernible in the raising of livestock.

Changes in the size of livestock operations have been accompanied by significant changes in feeding practices. Whereas a few decades ago the entire animal feed may have contained only a few ingredients in all, none of which were chemically synthesized, today feed for many animals, particularly the chick or turkey, may contain one to several dozen separate chemically manufactured compounds (nutrients as well as nonnutrients).

Dry Feed Ingredients

Typical formulated, dry animal feeds and feed products represent a combination of macro-and microingredients. The macroingredients, representing products of natural origin, include various combinations of the following ingredients:

1. Grains: corn, wheat, barley, oats, rye, sorghum, rice, buckwheat, millet, and triticale
2. Legumes: soybeans, fieldbeans, and peas
3. 3. Oil meals: soybean, cottonseed, corn germ, corn gluten, linseed, peanut, rapeseed, safflower, sesame, and sunflower
4. Fats: animal or vegetable
5. Fish, meat, blood, bone, and poultry by-product and feather meals
6. Dehydrated alfalfa, kelp, hay, and silage
7. Beet, citrus, and tomato pulp
8. Molasses
9. Dried skim milk and whey
10. Yeast
11. Miscellaneous by-products of food and fermentation processes, i.e., brewers’ grain, distiller solubles, and fermentation mycelia
12. Salts
13. Limestone, oyster shells, phosphate minerals, and inorganic sulfur

Microingredients and nonnutrients may include any combination of the following:

1. Amino acids: methioninine and lysine
2. Trace minerals: iron, copper, zinc, manganese, magnesium, selenium, iodine, and cobalt
3. Antioxidants: ethoxyquin, BHT, and BHA
4. Enzymes
5. Drugs
6. Flavors
7. Pellet binders
8. Mold and fungus inhibitors
9. Pigmenting agents
10. Vitamins (any or all)

Liquid feeds for ruminants are usually formulated with the following ingredients:

1. Molasses (cane or beet)
2. Lignin sulfonate
3. Water
4. Phosphoric acid or ammonium polyphosphate
5. Urea
6. Minerals: cobalt, copper, zinc, manganese, iron, and iodine
7. Vitamins: A, D, and E
8. Calcium (soluble form)

Vitamins

The water-soluble vitamins (Figure 1) are usually synthesized by microorganisms in the rumen of the adult ruminant and generally need not be added to the ration of these animals. Before the rumen flora become established, however, the young calf, lamb, or kid requires the same dietary supply of vitamins as do the monogastric animals such as the chicken, dog, or pig, etc. Knowledge of the water-soluble vitamin needs of the equine is still incomplete. Fat-soluble vitamins, on the other hand, are necessary in the rations of all livestock (Figure 2). For the most part, the vitamins appear to serve as parts of enzyme systems which catalyze specific biochemical reactions occurring in different cells of the body. General information on vitamin solubility, stability, and deficiency symptoms in animals has been tabulated (Table 1).

FIGURE 1 Water-soluble vitamins.

All the known vitamins are produced chemically or microbiologically in pure or highly concentrated form. The last vitamin discovered was cyanocobalamin, vitamin B₁₂, in 1948. Since that time, unidentified factors have been indicated to exist in fish products, fermentation products, milk by-products, etc., but during the past 20 years none of the unidentified growth factors (UGF) has been isolated or synthesized as a defined nutrient.

Vitamin A

Vitamin A, an unsaturated 20-carbon cyclic alcohol (Figure 2) is recognized as one of the more important vitamins in the practical feeding of ruminant and smaller farm animals. The all-trans isomer possesses a biological activity of 3,333,000 IU/g. The major esters of vitamin A alcohol, namely palmitate (1,817,000 IU/g),¹ acetate (2,907,000 IU/g),¹ and propionate (2,785,000 IU/g) also are manufactured by chemical synthesis. Mixed natural esters occur in fish oils. Since the carbon side chain contains double bonds, vitamin A can exist in different isomeric forms with different biological activities, i.e., the already mentioned all-trans (full bioactivity), the 2-mono-cis or neo-vitamin A (3/4 activity), the 6-mono-cis, and the 2,6-di-cis (1/4 activity). Vitamin A, produced by chemical synthesis, consists essentially of the all-trans isomer with a small percentage of neo-vitamin A present. Fish oils normally contain significant amounts of neo-vitamin A and small amounts of the 6 -cis isomers. Vitamin A forms do not exist in feedstuffs of plant origin; but rather as precursors, such as, β-carotene, and to a lesser extent α- and β-carotenes, cryptoxanthin, and other lesser known carotenoids.

FIGURE 2 Fat-soluble vitamins, β-carotene, and oxycarotenoids.

Table 1 Properties and Deficiency Symptoms of Vitamins

Table 2 Conversion of β-Carotene to Vitamin a for Different Species

β-Carotene has the highest vitamin activity of the known vitamin A precursors; its bio-potency is variable, however, depending on the level consumed and the species of animal involved. β-Apo-8’-carotenal, α-carotene, -γ-carotene and cryptoxanthin have about 50 to 60% of the biological activity of β-carotene, and a few others have 10 to 40%. The carotenes and related carotenoids exist in natural feed ingredients as both trans and cis isomers, in different states of degradation depending on the conditions of processing, handling, and storage and the stabilization techniques employed. Their vitamin A activity is difficult to determine unless a biological assay is performed, or a chemical assay of the individual carotenoid...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface CRC Series in Nutrition and Food
• Nutrient Sources and Feed Additives
• Food and Feed By-Products for Animal Feedings
• Miscellaneous Food Products for Animal and Human Use
• Nutrient Supplements for Plants
• Index